Related user guides

Integration

There are a number of integration options available for Subsforce customers that include online credit card payment processing and the automatic sending of order batches to your fulfilment bureau or in-house database.

This document assumes that no integration has been implemented and that your orders will be managed via the Subsforce management interface.

Fulfilment

The Subsforce fulfilment process allows you to download orders taken via your web site in a secure format, ready to be added to your subscription fulfilment database or sent to your bureau. Like all Subsforce features, orders can be accessed from the standard Wide Area management interface via the “your orders” item in the e-commerce block:

The system gives you the option to view order details, but it is more likely that you or your bureau will want to download the orders to upload into your fulfilment database.

The file output is a flexible csv file format.

Security

The Wide Area management system lets you control who has access to what content by having different access areas within you web site. Logging into the management interface will give users with the appropriate privileges enough access to view the order types that have been taken and update their status.

An additional password and memorable word is issued to you or your bureau to let you view customer data and download orders. This username and password is required every time that personal data is accessed and should be stored within your organisation with the same level of security as you would store customer credit card numbers and bank account details.

If Subsforce has been integrated with you online payment gateway then no credit card numbers will be stored in the management system and orders will be flagged as paid.

Bank details will still be accessible for Direct Debit orders.

Managing orders

You or your nominated representative will receive an email from Subsforce to alert you that there are new orders waiting to be downloaded. This email is generated every morning.

To fetch your orders you need to log into the management interface, select your orders from the home page and select the publication that you want to process:

Once you have selected the publication, select “view batches”

To create a batch, check the box in the “awaiting processing” area. Once created, you can expand the blue batch box to see a summary of the orders that are in the batch:

The “view orders” option lets you view the orders contained in the batch that you have just created.

You should update the status of each order once you have processed it so that the management system can reflect the true position of each order. You can record the subscription number from your fulfilment system and add comments in order to create an audit trail of order history.

As mentioned previously, payment information needs to be unlocked using a password and memorable word:

Once you have processed the order on your fulfilment system and updated the order, the batch description will change from “open” to “accepted”.

A order history is stored by the management system which means that any customer service issues can be resolved quickly.